WLS-TV, the ABC affiliate station in Chicago, has purchased two GY-HD250U ProHD cameras and is using them to perform live HD microwave remotes from the station's HD-ready ENG mobile vans. The camera offers WLS a cost-effective solution for such remote contributions, because it not only captures native 1280 x 720 60p HD video signals, but also has a built-in HD encoder for transmission.

Kal Hassan, station vice president and director of engineering‚ said they were using a Miranda ASI Bridge to convert the live 720 60p 19.7Mb/s MPEG-2 transport stream from the JVC cameras 1394 (Firewire) port to an ASI stream. They then feed digital microwave transmitters in the truck for transmission to the station, where the signal is decoded back to HD-SDI for production.

The GY-HD250U features an integrated broadcast HD encoder and 14b wideband video processing.

On Jan. 6, WLS-TV began to broadcast its local news programming in HD. The station has upgraded its entire local news operation to handle HD production.